I chronicle nonsense, mostly about the news, sometimes about pop culture. If you don't think it's nonsensical, then yell at me in the comments.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Why Isn’t There a White/Heterosexual/Cis-Man Pride Month?

BECAUSE YOU
HAVE EVERY OTHER MONTH, INCLUDING THIS ONE, YOU OBLIVIOUS SLIME MOLD.

Nearly every
month starting in February, there is a specific group’s history, heritage,
pride month: Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian/Pacific Islander
Month, Arab American History Month, LGBT Pride Month, Hispanic American Heritage
Month (They get 2!), etc. The UK steps it up and even has a Disability History
Month!

Good on you,
UK! You keep teaching the US how to do things from pretending imperialism is
altruism to celebrating people we done killed yesteryear!

But why are there so many special months?

Well, Gary, it’s
because these heritage/history/pride months were created in one way or another
to remind everyone that they exist, and that they helped build society along
with the majority. Without the contributions of these people, there would be no
civilization, but if you pick up a conventional history book, you would never
know that.

If their contributions are so great, why aren’t
they in the history books?

Because the
history books are written by the winners of the wars. This is a fact that goes
back to the beginning of books. Conquerors dictate the story. Libraries get
burned. Statues to old kings and queens get destroyed. The best way to
demoralize a conquered enemy is to destroy everything that proved their
existence. Hell, in Egypt, new pharaohs would destroy idles to the old pharaohs.
Speaking of Egypt, the reason we call it “Egypt” and not “Kemet” is because
some Greeks took it over and burned all their cool shit.

In most recent
years, (last 700 or so), the primary conquerors have been white men, even
though there are fewer white men in the world than “people of color”. The fact
that we even USE these terms “white” and “people of color” is proof of their
success. They invented the concept of race as we know it in order to justify
killing/conquering/relocating/enslaving other cultures without guilt!

So White Male Pride Month isn’t a thing
because white men haven’t been forgotten to history?

Not at this
point, Gary. The only time “white pride” and “straight pride” and “man pride”
have been brought up is in response to black, gay, and women’s equality movements.
It has always been a knee jerk reaction to the underlying statement, “Hey, we’re
here, too! We deserve to be treated like humans!” The power structure’s response
is to claim that the movement is anti-white straight male, smear the campaign
by discrediting leaders of the movements on some unrelated shit, and sometimes brutalize
and murder participants. It is not a coincidence that southern states started
re-flying the confederate flag right after waves were being made in civil
rights for black people. The governors and legislators knew that the flag was
an intimidation tool against people of color.

But what about things like St. Patrick’s
Day, and all the Polish and Italian and Greek and German fests? Those are all
white people. Why aren’t those celebrations frowned upon?

Because people
are only as white as the government deems them. Even today, government and
employment forms that ask for race/ethnicity cannot fathom that there are black
Hispanic people. My father is from Panama. My mother is from Maryland and New
York. According to the government, I have to be either/or, but not both. Germans,
Irish, Polish, Italians and Greeks weren’t always considered white. In the UK,
the English often compared Irish and Scottish and Welsh to something less than
human. The whole point of Manifest Destiny was to eradicate the “savages” of
the lands and claim them for America. In the US, immigrants were denigrated,
especially during the Irish Potato Famine. Later, we turned away a ship of Jews
trying to escape the certain death of returning to nazi Germany!

The benefit
that all those European peoples who now have fun festivals is that they were
able to intermingle and assimilate within a few generations, and then they are
considered hard workers who “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”. Black
and brown people have not been so fortunate. This luscious hue that protects us
from the sun’s rays [USE SUN SCREEN ANYWAY, GARY] has also been the primary
reason for people to dehumanize us, both in private and in government.

I still don’t see why a Hetero Pride Day or
a White Pride Month shouldn’t be a thing. I mean, gay marriage is legal, and we
had a black president.

Goddammit, Gary.
One or two achievements don’t equal equality. We had ONE black president, and
43 white ones before him. All men. The orange one doesn’t count as “colored”,
by the way. He received more unwarranted scrutiny than any of the last 5 previous
presidents, and one of them was responsible for Watergate! Gay marriage is
legal, but that doesn’t mean people are okay with it, and they’ll do everything
in their power (and out of their power) to discriminate LGBTQ people. It’s
still legal to fire a trans person for being trans in nearly half of the
states. For every Kim Davis that makes news, 100 Kim Davim lie in wait, like
bigoted cockroaches. And women’s rights have been getting chipped away state by
state.

But some straight white guys truly feel
attacked and threatened by some of the things these activists bring up.

The fear is
unwarranted. If someone saying “black lives matter” or “we’re here, we’re queer”
or “yes all women” makes you feel threatened, then you are showing how weak the
structure of your train of thought is. Black people saying “black lives matter”
is an imploration to remember that we are people as well. Gay and trans people
saying that they are present, and you need to get used to it, is just a
biological fact. At a minimum, 5% of every animal population has homosexual
pairings. It’s not contagious, and you’re going to be fine. Also, if you think
that 5% of the population is going to usurp and take over everyone’s way of
life, then you have a very high opinion of their tactical skills. You’re
thinking of multibillionaires. Even the 33 lost. Women pointing out ridiculous
things they have to put up with to survive are not attacking you. No one said
YOU did all those things, Gary. If you didn’t do it, then you don’t have to say
a thing. “Not all men” is a bullshit response.

Will there ever be a time when a
Straight/White/Cis-Men Month would be valid?

Did you read a
damn thing I wrote, Gary? Was I talking to the wind? Are you just a figment of
my imagination that I’m using to field the ridiculous common questions and
comments I get from people on a weekly basis? UGH! Let me break it down like
this:

Until you can
show me a time in history when a majority gay population stoned to death anyone
who was accused of being straight, or when gay police squads raided straight
bars and brutalized the bar-goers with impunity, or when a primarily gay court
sentenced a person to chemical castration or jail time for the crime of being
straight, or when you can provide statistics on homeless youth who are out on
the street because they came out to their parents as straight, or when cis-straight men were murdered by transwomen, then your “straight
pride” and “heterosexual pride day” movements are utter bullshit.

Until you can
show me when dark hued people in Africa and Asia concocted a pseudoscience to
categorize lighter skinned people as inferior, or when they used their bullshit
fragile metric as a reason to invade, enslave, or just eradicate entire
countries of Europe, or when a majority black justice system created a
school-to-prison pipeline by deliberately segregating white communities and
basing school funding on property value, KNOWING that the lower funded schools
would be where they cordoned off the white people, or when you were admonished
at work because your naturally straight hair was deemed “unprofessional”, then
your “white pride” and requests for a “white pride month” are inane.

Until you can
tell me when women deemed men as property and regularly systematically sexually
assaulted them during peace times, when an all-woman legislature barred men
from holding office, voting, or owning land, when men were primarily accused of
being witches and hanged or burned at the stake, depression or just independent
thought is described as “hysteria”, and the only way to cure them was by giving
them an orgasm, or when men were turned down for jobs for fear that they may
start a family, or when men ghosted women because they were legitimately afraid
that women might go nuclear and murder them, then your “men’s right” and “cis-men’s
pride month are a new word I call “fucktrumpetry”.

You won’t be
able to do any of this, Gary, so don’t even try. All of these
straight/cis-male/white pride movements are based in fear of giving up power.
They are the confederate flags on state capitals against the movements that are
simply trying to get equality. Like those confederate flags, they’re just
displaying their weakness and bigotry. This is the type of fear of the
unpowered many that led to the public execution of a carpenter who had some
cool ideas on being kind to people.